June 25, 2025 • 35 mins
Leadership isn't just about managing people—it's the foundation that builds extraordinary brands. In this candid exploration of business growth, Ty Cobb-Backer reveals how leadership philosophies directly impact brand development and market presence.
At its core, effective leadership requires mastering self-management before attempting to guide others. Leaders must inspire trust, cast clear vision, make difficult decisions, and develop the art of delegation. As Ty shares from personal experience, "People do what you inspect, not what you expect"—highlighting how active monitoring and feedback drive desired outcomes far more effectively than simple expectations.
This leadership approach transforms a simple roofing company into a powerful marketing organization that builds both homes and people. Your brand exists in three crucial media spaces: rented (social platforms), earned (reviews/referrals), and owned (website/email lists). Each requires strategic attention to create the omnipresence that generates trust. Remember, most potential customers need 11-13 touch points before making that first call.
What truly separates thriving brands from struggling ones is culture. When team members feel empowered to contribute ideas without fear of rejection, they take ownership. This ownership mentality—visible when employees proudly wear company gear off-clock or enthusiastically recommend services to friends—creates an army of authentic brand ambassadors who amplify your reach exponentially.
Ready to transform your leadership approach and build a brand that stands for more than just products or services? Listen now to discover how vulnerability, transparency, and empowerment create the unshakable culture that turns customers into believers and employees into champions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ty Cobb Backer (00:02):
And I believe we are back.
Welcome back everybody toBeyond Tool Belt, episode 287.
I am your host, ty Cobb-Backer.
Thank you for joining us onthis Wednesday edition.
We will be back right after ourshort intro from our sponsors
TC Backer.
Tc Backer Roofing, tiling,windows, gutters, solar.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
R-Share Roofing are bold, the conversations are real
and the insights come to youlive, raw and uncut.
Every week, host Ty Cobb-Backersits down to bring you the
stories, the struggles, thelessons learned and the wins.
No filters, no scripts, justthe truth.
Please welcome your host ofBehind the Tool Belt, ty
Cobb-Backer.
Ty Cobb Backer (01:01):
Hey, hey, and we are back.
Ty Cobb backer.
Hey and we are back.
Thank you everybody for joiningus on this amazing, hot as hell
Wednesday afternoon.
Apologies for being late.
We had some shit pop off had tobe dealt with, not necessarily
technical issues or behind thetool belt issues, just worldly
(01:27):
life shit that we got to takecare of.
Sometimes, bounce back and stayresilient and I wanted to say
the word intentionally resilient.
I'm intentionally saying thatword because that is going to be
a complete episode onresiliency leadership, bouncing
back.
When shit gets rough, justpunch it right back in the face
and, like Mike Tyson says,everybody's got a plan until you
(01:49):
get punched in the face.
Right, and sometimes we getpunched in the face, sometimes
we get kicked in the ball,sometimes we get punched in the
gut.
We got to learn how to bounceback.
So, anyhow, welcome back.
Last week, we talked aboutusing a seven-part framework
that helps you connect withhomeowners, build trust and
serve more homeowners.
Okay, this week we're going tokind of try to tie some of this
(02:13):
into that, but we're going totalk about you know how to
amplify your brand by developingyour company culture through
leadership and creating lastingauthority while expanding your
market presence, and I like tocall that utilizing an
unconventional brandingphilosophy and accelerating
company growth.
So let's dive into this.
(02:36):
Most of this starts withleadership right.
There's no secret sauce.
You have to be able to manageyourself, lead yourself, take
care of yourself.
You can't take care of yourself, how are you supposed to take
care of anyone or anything elseIf you can't lead yourself right
?
And that's something that youknow, man shooey.
(03:00):
I have studied leadership for aslong as I can remember.
I talk about it all the time.
Quite frankly, I get tired ofthe word leadership, but I can
come up with something better.
It's all about leadership,personal development.
But, you know, creating acompany culture, a brand you
(03:23):
know a lot of that starts,starts up top right.
It starts with the person incharge, charge of people and
leading people and articulatingthat message and and creating
trust.
And, uh, you know, being agreat leader starts with
learning how to, you know, serveothers, serve your family,
serve your organization, yourcommunity.
(03:44):
And I also like to throw inthere, like your industry,
distribution and manufacturing,right, especially in the
industry that we're in, we're inthe roofing space and we affect
all those facets of it.
You know, our community, ourindustry, manufacturing all
those things.
Like, we fully stand behind theproducts that we use.
Manufacturers stand behind us,we use their products and all
(04:08):
that stuff.
So, but, having said that, thereare certain attributes that go
into leadership, right, that's,the ability to inspire trust,
cast a vision, sense ofdirection, to make hard
decisions right and see thatthey're carried out, and develop
the art of delegating insteadof trying to do everything
(04:29):
ourselves.
You know, and that's somethingthat I used to get caught up in,
I still get caught up in thatstuff and I still see them see,
some of our team members getcaught up in that stuff where
it's like, you know, I don'tknow if we feel like we're being
lazy, we're being hard onourselves If we're delegating
things.
We hate to ask people for help,all these things, all this
stupid shit that goes throughour minds as people that are in
(04:53):
charge of people, right, and Isay in charge of people, we're
not necessarily in charge ofpeople, but, like we're in
charge of, like, theirlivelihood, making sure that
they're getting paid, makingsure that they're feeding their
families, you know, or takingcare of our community, making
sure that they have a peace ofmind, with a solid roof put on
their home right, like we're incharge of that, like we have
(05:14):
control over certain attributesof that.
And you know this means thatyou know we have to have the
capabilities of picking theright people right For carrying
out particular tasks and, youknow, consistently evaluating
(05:37):
their performance, which I'mgetting better at that, you know
, because I'm guilty of.
You know, hey go do this Rightand then turning my back on and
getting distracted by somethingelse and not necessarily
following back up.
But you gotta have that, that,that that picker, you gotta have
a good picker right.
Because if you're anything likeI am, you know I'm guilty, I
(06:00):
have a lot of character defects,I have a lot of shortcomings.
I don't give very good clarity.
You know I don't express thevision clearly enough to the
right people.
There's not the right people inthe room at the time where it's
like, oh shit, I'm hoping thatthat message gets out.
But the thing that I've learnedover the years too, is that
people don't start taking youserious until you repeat
(06:21):
yourself several times, andusually they say the magic
number seven times before theyactually take you serious.
You know what I mean.
So I'll intentionally be abutthead and we'll have a
meeting and I'll say somethingI'll repeat myself seven times,
because, and one last time, lastbut not least, number seven,
make sure we do this right X, y,z, whatever that, whatever that
(06:42):
might be Right.
But you know, evaluating theirperformance, like that's, that's
, that's something big, andwe're we're going to probably
talk about a little more of thatlater on and you know, this is
thing too.
I wish I had like four hours ofof like really dive in deep
into you know what, what we'reabout to talk about today.
(07:04):
You know I was talking to Vicearlier about like.
You know we're just reallygoing to scratch the surface
here when, in terms of likeleadership and how that rolls
into creating a great culture,how that rolls into creating,
you know, omnipresence and andbrand awareness and and all
those good things.
But I think I think we puttogether enough bullet points to
(07:25):
you know cover and have youguys pretty much get the gist of
what it is.
You know that we're trying tosay.
But, getting back to you know,picking the right people and
making sure they have thecapabilities do they get it, do
they want it?
Do they understand it?
You know Gino Wickman talksabout the GWI get it, want it
(07:46):
and understand it, or have thecapabilities, gwc, I think, get
it, want it and have thecapabilities of doing it.
Okay, it's been a minute.
That's probably a yearly readthat.
I should probably pick that upsoon and read that.
But, and understanding people'sstrengths and weaknesses right,
and their limitations right, andjust because you put somebody
in a position and they don't doso well in a position doesn't
(08:08):
mean that they they, you knowwon't excel in in a different
position.
You know, and I think Vic as aperfect example, there's a
couple of things that we bouncedhim around in and not saying
that he, he didn't do well inthose positions, but there was
other positions, like the onehe's in today, where he's really
grabbed it and and has has ranwith it and has become a great
(08:31):
fricking content creator.
And, uh, I'm grateful to havehim in my life today, or else we
probably still wouldn't bedoing this at least on a weekly
basis, cause I think there was acouple of times where I was
like, oh man, I don't know atleast one major time and were on
the road and I was like, dude,I don't know, man, if there was
going to be a day that weweren't going to actually do a
live right, cause, of course,I'm a glutton for punishment, so
(08:53):
we do this live every week.
So what you see is what you gethere, kids, I'm sorry, this is
live, raw and uncut.
Switch the channel, but if youlove it and think somebody can
get something out of this,please share it with them.
Okay, and if you've got anyquestions, please put them in
the comments and I will get tothem as soon as I can.
I actually got my trusty iPadup here so I can see what
(09:15):
everyone out in the internetworld is what they have to say.
So, anyhow, however, gettingback to the great leaders and
sometimes being a crisis managerright, we sometimes are
marriage counselors, sometimeswe are TV repair guys, sometimes
(09:36):
whatever.
Whatever it takes, especiallywhen you work here at TC Backer.
It's whatever it takes andwhich may mean having to deal
with problems for which there'sno playbook for, and I think I
might have experienced one ofthem today and inevitably,
(09:56):
mistakes will be made and greatleaders learn how to rebound and
move on.
We were talking about resiliencyearlier and I think that's
something.
I think that's going to be areally good topic for an episode
at some point in time I think Igot some notes in my why Some
of you have heard me talk aboutmy notes and I call it my why
(10:20):
and bouncing back and notnecessarily allowing a situation
or an event ruin your entireday or week or month or
potentially even a whole year,but you know, learning how to
rebound and all that stuff.
So, effective leadership youknow, leaders who have actively,
(10:44):
you know, inspected andprovided feedback are more
likely to get desired outcomesRight.
And that phrase people talkabout, I hear this phrase
probably more now than ever.
People expect what is inspectedRight.
So people do what you inspect.
(11:04):
And you know, I think the firsttime that I may have heard that
.
I don't know if I fullyunderstood that until I actually
sat down and I started to jotsome notes and stuff down, you
know, and, and and kind of couldfigure out a way to, to
articulate it in a sense where Iunderstood it.
So then if I'm saying peopleexpect what is inspected, then I
(11:28):
could articulate to our leaders, our managers, and listen, this
thing is fluid, right, like ourKPIs continuously change, our
SOPs continuously change, ourstandards usually change for the
better and rise.
A lot of these things are fluidand we're recently revamping
(11:49):
some of our kpis and along withthat comes creating some more
sops.
Anytime you get in there andyou start tweaking things, that
usually takes you down to aanother rabbit hole and you
realize, well, this might bebroken or this hasn't worked for
a while, or whatever the casemight be.
So people do what you inspect,right, not what you expect.
(12:12):
This highlights commonleadership principle.
It means that individuals tendto prioritize the things that
you're actually checking ormonitoring.
Going back to, I do somewhat ofa piss poor job of falling back
up and just monitoring, butthat's where KPIs are very
crucial, right?
Rather than things that arejust expected right, and I'm
(12:34):
guilty of that of like, justkind of like expecting things,
you know, and and I heard thislong time ago expectations are
premeditated resentment.
So why do I have expectationsIf it, if it's my fault that I
didn't articulate the messagewell enough or follow up and
check in and critique littlecritiques along the way, right,
(12:54):
if I'm seeking a desired outcome.
So, anyhow, what formerly?
In other words, I'm sorry.
In other words, what youformally assess and evaluate
will likely be the focus oftheir attention and efforts.
So, getting back to, peopleexpect what is expected.
(13:16):
So for an example, I got apretty good example here and I'm
going to use project managerright.
So if a project manager expectsteam members to meet a certain
deadline but doesn't trackprogress or provide regular
feedback, they might find thatdeadlines are falling behind.
However, if the manager rightactively monitors progress,
(13:38):
provides feedback and evenoffers support again critiquing
right when needed they are morelikely to see the deadlines are
met right.
So that means just because andthat this is a part this is the
learning curve here of learninghow to delegate right.
Delegate doesn't mean set it andforget it Doesn't mean that
(14:00):
whatsoever.
That means get the frameworkbuilt out.
This share what my experiencehas been thus far right, and
that doesn't mean it's not goingto change.
That doesn't mean that thatperson that you actually
delegate it to doesn't have abetter idea where it's quicker,
faster, better, um, whatever thecase might be.
(14:21):
I'm sorry, I keep getting phonecalls again.
It just seems like the lastpast couple of weeks here.
Don't you know who I am, butanyhow I'll have to get back to
you.
Actually, that number Iactually recognize.
So I don't think he follows uson social, so that's probably
why he didn't call.
So again getting back to theexample of you know delegating
(14:44):
and following back up andmonitoring progress and
critiquing things along the way,right Like, just don't wait to.
The example of you knowdelegating and falling back up
and monitoring progress andcritiquing things along the way,
Right Like, just don't wait tothe to the end, like come back
six months later and wonder whythings aren't the way or up to
speed or, you know, whatever thecase might be, and I have been
so guilty, you know, inidentifying that shortcoming of
myself, it's really half thebattle, you know, until I've
(15:06):
smashed my head against the wallnumerous times and screamed and
hollered and jumped up and downand all those crazy things and
behaved poorly and setexpectations for people, you
know, and then again going togetting back to the premeditated
, premeditated resentment.
So some of you might be likewhat does any of this have to do
(15:30):
with creating a brand?
Okay, well, this is thing.
We're no longer just a roofingcompany, we're a marketing
company, we're a brandingcompany.
We are in the people buildingbusiness.
Right, we build people.
So where does that start?
That starts with coaching,mentoring, leading by example.
(15:51):
All those cliches, all thosecatchphrases, all that stuff.
It's true, it's one thing tocome on a podcast, run your
mouth all freaking day long andtalk about how I did this and
how I did that, but where therubber really meets the road is
when I'm off the air.
Am I falling up?
Am I doing these things?
Am I working on myself?
Right?
Well, I guess that's still outto jury, but I can tell you this
(16:15):
I am working on these things.
I am not perfect at thesethings, but again, this, this is
.
There's no final destinationhere.
Right, it's a journey thatwe're on.
We're all in this together and,uh, I love it.
I love it.
So our job, right, as as amarketing company that does
roofing, right, and in thepeople building business, right,
(16:37):
our job is to bring awarenessto customers.
Right, well, I can't do that.
I don't want to get out here onevery single freaking rooftop
and screen TC backer and hopepeople that trust, like and know
me.
Right, it takes, it takes avillage, right?
And?
And to give them that lasting,trusting impression of our
(16:58):
organization.
You might ask yourself what doesany of this have to do with
brand awareness, right?
Well, I started with theleadership.
I started with leading byexample and having a good picker
and surrounding yourself aroundhighly motivated people who are
trying to not only change theirlives for the better but also
(17:22):
improve the quality of thecommunity in which we live in
the better, but also improve thequality of the community in
which we live in.
So we are in the business ofcultivating a group of people
that believe in themselves,believe in the brand and what
they are trying to achieve right.
So that starts at the top.
So let's talk about brandawareness.
(17:42):
Okay, everything everyone seeswith your logo on it is bringing
awareness to your company.
Most people, most people, needat least 11 to 13 impressions.
Touch points, right.
If they don't know, if theydon't know you before they'll
even call right.
So the name of the game is ishe who gets the most touch
(18:06):
points first wins, right?
So if we're in a highlycompetitive market and you know
our team is just kind of sittingaround in the sales office
waiting for the phone to ringand not participating in in the
omnipresence that we're tryingto create here by, you know,
(18:26):
putting door hangers out,putting yard signs out, churning
out amazing work where you knowpeople will refer us, give us a
good review, you know.
And then, of course, if theback office isn't doing.
You know what we're supposed tobe doing.
You know, as far as themarketing aspect of things
Facebook ads if our team's notsharing our Facebook ads, you
(18:50):
know tagging other people in it.
So this, this isn't just like aone person job to help create
this.
Right, our logo is, is not, isnot our brand.
So I just want to clear that up.
Like, the logo isn't the brand,okay, it's creating an image in
(19:12):
somebody's mind, though, okay,and hopefully a feeling of trust
Every time that they see ourlogo.
I want them to feel that thatfeeling of trust Like they.
They stand behind, they havegreat people that work for them.
I want to work there, right,feeling that.
I hope that we do.
I hope that we're creating thatfeeling.
(19:37):
You know what I mean, and a lotof times, a person's first
impression comes from a Googlereview.
That's why we talked about thetrifecta last week a little bit.
The three-legged stool, right,the repeat referral and reviews,
right, that's what we should bethinking about as salespeople,
right, and?
And not just that.
I mean there, there's more toit than just, oh, you know the
(19:58):
three R's, but that's again.
We're just.
We're just.
We're just scratching thesurface here, right, and, and
what we're just?
We're just, we're justscratching the surface here,
right, and?
And what we're talking about isis is we're talking about our
brand, right, and we don't?
We here we don't usemanipulation marketing.
We don't use the buy one, getone free method or the
percentage off, or or you knowany of that stuff.
(20:19):
We want people who buy from us,right, because they believe in
what it is that we're trying todo here.
Right, they believe in thevalue of of what we're doing.
Right, giving back to thecommunity, building a company
that everybody wants to work for, right, that's, that's culture.
Right, that's a part of it.
It's a small piece of it.
I could talk about culture allfreaking day, you know, and then
(20:42):
creating, creating, you knowthat unshakable culture.
I call it unshakable culture,right, I've heard, I'm sure I
heard that someplace but onceyou have built that unshakable
culture, that's when your brandcan earn the reputation in the
marketplace.
Not only, not only are is yourexcuse me, past, present and
(21:05):
future customers your brand, incase you didn't know that they
are.
And let's not forget about yourteam.
Your team plays a huge role inthe brand making machine here.
Your team is a huge part of thestory.
Okay, creating an image in theminds of your clients and your
team.
Right, creating omnipresenceright, like we're everywhere,
(21:26):
like your team's.
Out in the grocery store,they're wearing shirts on the
weekends, hats at the you know,the kids baseball game, all that
stuff.
I love seeing family photos ofour team members that somebody's
wearing a hat.
They're not at work, they'reoff the clock, but they eat,
breathe and shit this thing.
Right, those are the type ofpeople that we're trying to
build.
Those are the type of peoplethat we are trying to attract.
(21:50):
So hopefully, we're going tolearn how to do this, you know,
through leadership.
Right, utilize, brand, createan omnipresence and stand the
test of time and take yourbusiness to the next level,
right, so how do we do some ofthat?
Right, I talked about thebackend, the marketing team that
(22:11):
we have here, most of which wedo all in-house.
Big shout out to John, johnnyStouffer and Skylar and Vic and
and Aaron Thomas over there at asales gadget Great.
So there's three forms of media, okay, there's, there's rented,
there's earned and there'sowned.
Right, and some of you may haveheard of this and some of you
may not have any idea what I'mtalking about.
(22:32):
So I'm going to touch on thesea little bit.
So rented, rented media okay is, is you own the content?
Okay, but you don't own outletssuch as like LinkedIn, facebook
, youtube, all those thingsright, that's kind of rented
space.
You have to pay for that space,okay.
And then there's earned rightEarned and we talked about
(22:55):
reviews earlier word of mouthand referrals.
You have to rely on somebodyelse for this, okay, we have to
rely on our, our teammates, wehave to rely on our production
team, we have to rely on thehomeowner giving us a review.
Hopefully we performed a greatjob, so they feel that we're
(23:18):
worthy of getting a five-starreview and they're more
important than I think a lot ofcompanies understand.
I kind of scroll Googlesometimes and I'll Google,
doesn't matter where I'm at,I'll Google roofers near me and
see who pops up and what pops up.
And I don't just go to thefirst page.
I kind of click through, clickthrough, click through, and it
(23:39):
is amazing to me the amount ofroofing contractors that are out
there that don't pay too muchattention to Google guaranteed
and reviews or replying back tobad reviews, because you're
going to get them.
Let's face it, we're going toget bad reviews.
It's how we deal with it thatseparates us, right, most of the
(24:00):
time.
I'll be honest with you.
We do have a handful of badreviews.
We can't ever figure out ifthey were clients of ours or not
, but we do with you.
We do have a handful of badreviews.
We can't ever figure out ifthey were clients of ours or not
, but we do reply back.
We apologize that you've had abad experience with us.
Please let us know what we doto resolve the issue.
Blah, blah, blah.
Of course you never hearanything back.
We looked our name up in oursystem.
Of course they're not there,and most of these they're
(24:21):
probably envious haters or othercompanies or who.
Who the hell knows?
You know it could be some guythat's watching this right now
thinking I'm a butthead, anddecided to go on TC backers
Google page and give us a badreview.
I don't know, it is what it is,but again, you got to stay
resilient, right?
So, anyhow.
And then there's there's theowned space of marketing
(24:44):
marketing.
Okay, you got your website, gota blog, got an email list, you
got direct mail, but each one ofthese work together.
You have to do all of them, butunderstanding them like I kind
of broke down a little bit helpsyou understand.
You know what and where and whythese things are important.
(25:05):
Okay, you're going to have topay for the rented space.
You own the content.
You have control over thecontent in which you are
producing and putting out onthese other outlets and forms of
creating a brand and gettingyourself out there in front of
people.
Right, and this, this is whereyour team, your past, your
present, your future clientshelp also become your brand on a
(25:30):
lot of these outlets as well.
Right Just to the last past fewdays, there must have been a
storm or something that camethrough where I see past,
present and future clientsrecommending us in a lot of
these Facebook groups and pagesand people you know be in the
now.
There's a lot of these be in thenows and someone's asking for a
(25:52):
referral or a reference orwhatever the case might be like
hey, does anybody know a goodflat rubber roofer?
And it's like I see half thesepeople.
I don't know who they are, butbecause of creating that
omnipresence right, they couldhave just saw our billboards.
Or I even seen someone say, hey, I see these guys around a lot,
or hey, they did my neighbor'sroof right.
Obviously we did a good job totheir neighbor's roof because
(26:13):
the neighbor wasn't over theretalking shit about us because we
did a bad job right.
So that's creating.
But they wouldn't have seen us,they wouldn't have known if our
trucks weren't out there, ifour yard sign wasn't out there,
if our team didn't go out thereand at least do a six pack, six
cross street, three to the left,three to the right.
We would be doing theneighborhood a disservice, like
(26:35):
somebody said last week, I think, if we didn't let the neighbors
know that we are in theneighborhood and we're here to
take care of you.
We're here to serve if you guysever need anything, because
we're not necessarily here tosell you a roof.
We just want to be your roofer.
We want to be your exteriorcontractor, we want to be your
family's exterior contractor.
We want to build that trust.
We want them to know us and weobviously want them to like us,
(26:58):
because that's who people dobusiness with.
People do business with peoplethat they know, that they like,
that they trust right.
And that's what we're trying tolook Every time someone sees
this logo.
I want them to feel trust.
That's a trusted household name, right, and it takes time.
You're going to get knocked down.
(27:18):
You're going to have to getback up.
You're going to make mistakes,but you got to correct them,
like immediately.
Make mistakes, but you got tocorrect them, like immediately.
Don't procrastinate, don't runfrom, don't let fear.
Control, control you rightFight, flight or freeze.
You have three choices.
You got three F's fun first andflexible.
I'm just kidding.
Fun, right, fight, flight orfreeze.
(27:40):
But you should be right Funfirst and flexible.
You got to stay resilient.
I can't talk about, I can'twait till we do that.
We're going to do one sin onresiliency.
I love that word.
Right now, that's my word, it'smy jam, my jam, let's go Anyhow
.
So we touched on creating.
Obviously, becoming a goodleader starts.
(28:02):
Everything starts up at the top.
Everything stinks.
What do they say?
The fish stinks at the headwhen there's a problem, right?
Typically, we've worked forcompanies where we feel like the
people that work for thosepeople are terrified to make
mistakes.
Right, you gotta, you gotta,you gotta.
Leave room for error.
There's going to be mistakesmade.
(28:22):
Shit, we made some mistakes inour marketing.
The phones weren't working.
I still don't have any ideawhat the hell was going on there
.
But once we found out, spent alot of money on marketing for
about 30 days.
Come find out the damn phonewasn't ringing.
Couldn't figure out why thephone wasn't ringing.
So then I picked my cell phoneup, I called the phone number
that was posted on our websiteand guess what it rang it rang,
(28:45):
it rang, it rang.
It rang Like whoa, wait aminute, where's Cam's voice at
stating that this call may berecorded or monitored, let alone
a freaking voicemail.
Not that we should ever, ever,let it go to voicemail.
And that's the thing.
Once you get the phone ringinglike answer the phone, bro, do
what you're going to say you'regoing to do, show up, suit up,
(29:15):
no matter what, and get outthere and do the best job that
you can.
So, yeah, my point is lead byexample, right, people, people,
people do what they watch.
Man, I could again.
I could be up here and I'll bethe first one to tell you that
that I'm I'm not perfect at anyof this, but by me teaching and
leading by example and all ofthese things, I probably get
more out of coaching than Iactually do studying, because I
(29:36):
know I have to study if I'mgoing to lead or if I'm going to
mentor from, if there's acoaching opportunity.
And the other thing that I'velearned too is sometimes I just
got to let people work thingsout and just stay out of the way
when I used to feel like I hadto control every single
situation.
But again, that's where I feellike that unshakable culture.
You know where people havetaken ownership culture.
(29:57):
You know where people havetaken ownership.
You know there's people again,getting back to some of these
Facebook groups where I seepeople recommending us, there
are, there are team members.
Today I saw it today that thatisn't even on that side of the
building.
That has nothing to do right,technically, technically, but
they understand the importanceof of promoting the company, but
(30:20):
they they they're notnecessarily right, but they
understand the importance ofpromoting the company, but
they're not necessarily right.
But they're not that smallminded to think that this won't
affect me at some point in time.
The guys aren't selling jobs ifthe phone's not ringing, right,
even though all they do iscrunch numbers or pull tickets
or bid jobs for new construction, right, they do know in the
long run, at some point in time,that the phone stops ringing,
(30:41):
this will affect my job andthat's where we're all on the
same team and that's where, like, creating that unity, that
camaraderie, that fellowship,and it's not always about
business, it's not always aboutwork, it's about getting and
pulling together and performing21 Turkey Sloot Shit.
Before I forget, we arecelebrating, we're going to do
(31:04):
something.
Something's coming up soon forour 17th anniversary 8-8, 8-8,
8-7, 7-7, 0-8, 7-7, 7-7-0-8,.
Okay, is our 17th anniversaryright?
And getting back to a littlebit of what we were talking
about here, none of this right.
I'm not saying that I wasn'tlike the founder and the CEO and
(31:25):
, yeah, I went out and I swunghammer and killed myself pretty
much at the start of this.
It was until I realized that Ineeded help.
We brought a lot of people in.
Most have stayed over the years, still bringing new recruits in
.
We're always looking for toptalent, by the way, doesn't
(31:48):
matter what field, doesn'tmatter.
Don't have to be a roofer,don't have to be a gutterman,
don't have to be a salesperson,but if you're looking for a
career change, let us know,cause we're always.
If you're, if you're highlymotivated and aren't afraid of
work or being held accountable,let us know.
Anyhow, the amazing team I wasjust talking to Jan about this
(32:12):
last night the amazing team thatthat we have molded and built
and coached and mentored, andshit that's.
And that's the other thing.
It's like when you're learningprobably just as much from your
team as as I can give them, andwe're really at that point right
now, okay, where I'm learningprobably more from our team
right now.
That's where true, genuine,authentic culture lives.
(32:36):
In that right, I don't need toknow all the answers.
I don't know all the answers.
Okay, I have no idea what thehell I'm doing half the time.
Again, sometimes there's noplaybook, but I do know how I
react.
I do know my behavior canaffect every single outcome.
Okay, like if I'm sitting inthe room and I have to pretend
(32:59):
I'm smartest person in the roomand I have all the answers, when
everybody in that room knowsthat I don't, I look like a fool
and that's okay, that I don'tknow, and it's okay that there
may be people in this building,that there is people in this
building that are way and muchmore smarter than I am, and
especially in certain areas ofthis, especially where we're at
today, I'm cool with that.
(33:20):
I think the vulnerability, Ithink the transparency goes a
lot further than me going upthere pulling the plug on a
project or knocking somebody'sideas down.
Baker came to me a couple oftimes this week with amazing
ideas that he thought of overthe weekend.
I could have sat in my officewhen he presented them to me and
(33:41):
I could have shot him down.
I could have ripped the rug outfrom underneath him and said
that was dumb.
No, we're not going to do itthis way.
You should really do it thatway.
I heard him out.
He's going with it.
Yesterday he came up, proposedanother idea to me right, loved
it.
I thanked him, he.
He told me today in a textmessage that what you know, the
(34:06):
outcome of it and it, it'sworking Right.
I I don't even think I gave himas far as like feedback or any
ideas of like well, maybe youshould try it, like this or
whatever.
It's like fuck.
I've never done it before and Idon't think he's ever done it
before.
It's just his idea and he ranwith it.
Now, what do you think that'sgoing to do?
It empowered him.
(34:28):
He's taken ownership in thatshit.
He's taken ownership.
He has taken ownership in a lotof things.
Why?
Because I'm not a dick.
Most of the time, I do have baddays, but anyhow, I think I'm
done.
I think I'm done running mymouth right now, um, but listen.
If you're a contractor and youwant to learn more, okay, follow
(34:49):
us on facebook, youtube, hit meup, private chat, whatever,
whatever, whatever, whatever,hey.
And if you're a homeowner, okay, and your roof is roof is old,
it's leaking or it's damaged,don't wait for things to get
worse.
At TC Backer, we've helpedthousands and I mean thousands
homeowners protect their homeswith quality roofing, financing
(35:11):
options and a team they cantrust.
Getting back to the trust no,like, right, want to take the
next step?
Visit our website or give us acall for a free inspection.
No pressure, just answers.
And remember a solid roof isn'tjust about shingles, it's about
a piece.
It's about peace of mind.
Till next week.
You guys take care of eachother and stay cool out there.
It is hot as hell.
(35:32):
Have a good night, guys.
And I believe we are back.
Welcome back everybody toBeyond Tool Belt, episode 287.
I am your host, ty Cobb-Backer.
Thank you for joining us onthis Wednesday edition.
We will be back right after ourshort intro from our sponsors
TC Backer.
Tc Backer Roofing, tiling,windows, gutters, solar.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
R-Share Roofing are bold, the conversations are real
and the insights come to youlive, raw and uncut.
Every week, host Ty Cobb-Backersits down to bring you the
stories, the struggles, thelessons learned and the wins.
No filters, no scripts, justthe truth.
Please welcome your host ofBehind the Tool Belt, ty
Cobb-Backer.
Ty Cobb Backer (01:01):
Hey, hey, and we are back.
Ty Cobb backer.
Hey and we are back.
Thank you everybody for joiningus on this amazing, hot as hell
Wednesday afternoon.
Apologies for being late.
We had some shit pop off had tobe dealt with, not necessarily
technical issues or behind thetool belt issues, just worldly
(01:27):
life shit that we got to takecare of.
Sometimes, bounce back and stayresilient and I wanted to say
the word intentionally resilient.
I'm intentionally saying thatword because that is going to be
a complete episode onresiliency leadership, bouncing
back.
When shit gets rough, justpunch it right back in the face
and, like Mike Tyson says,everybody's got a plan until you
(01:49):
get punched in the face.
Right, and sometimes we getpunched in the face, sometimes
we get kicked in the ball,sometimes we get punched in the
gut.
We got to learn how to bounceback.
So, anyhow, welcome back.
Last week, we talked aboutusing a seven-part framework
that helps you connect withhomeowners, build trust and
serve more homeowners.
Okay, this week we're going tokind of try to tie some of this
(02:13):
into that, but we're going totalk about you know how to
amplify your brand by developingyour company culture through
leadership and creating lastingauthority while expanding your
market presence, and I like tocall that utilizing an
unconventional brandingphilosophy and accelerating
company growth.
So let's dive into this.
(02:36):
Most of this starts withleadership right.
There's no secret sauce.
You have to be able to manageyourself, lead yourself, take
care of yourself.
You can't take care of yourself, how are you supposed to take
care of anyone or anything elseIf you can't lead yourself right
?
And that's something that youknow, man shooey.
(03:00):
I have studied leadership for aslong as I can remember.
I talk about it all the time.
Quite frankly, I get tired ofthe word leadership, but I can
come up with something better.
It's all about leadership,personal development.
But, you know, creating acompany culture, a brand you
(03:23):
know a lot of that starts,starts up top right.
It starts with the person incharge, charge of people and
leading people and articulatingthat message and and creating
trust.
And, uh, you know, being agreat leader starts with
learning how to, you know, serveothers, serve your family,
serve your organization, yourcommunity.
(03:44):
And I also like to throw inthere, like your industry,
distribution and manufacturing,right, especially in the
industry that we're in, we're inthe roofing space and we affect
all those facets of it.
You know, our community, ourindustry, manufacturing all
those things.
Like, we fully stand behind theproducts that we use.
Manufacturers stand behind us,we use their products and all
(04:08):
that stuff.
So, but, having said that, thereare certain attributes that go
into leadership, right, that's,the ability to inspire trust,
cast a vision, sense ofdirection, to make hard
decisions right and see thatthey're carried out, and develop
the art of delegating insteadof trying to do everything
(04:29):
ourselves.
You know, and that's somethingthat I used to get caught up in,
I still get caught up in thatstuff and I still see them see,
some of our team members getcaught up in that stuff where
it's like, you know, I don'tknow if we feel like we're being
lazy, we're being hard onourselves If we're delegating
things.
We hate to ask people for help,all these things, all this
stupid shit that goes throughour minds as people that are in
(04:53):
charge of people, right, and Isay in charge of people, we're
not necessarily in charge ofpeople, but, like we're in
charge of, like, theirlivelihood, making sure that
they're getting paid, makingsure that they're feeding their
families, you know, or takingcare of our community, making
sure that they have a peace ofmind, with a solid roof put on
their home right, like we're incharge of that, like we have
(05:14):
control over certain attributesof that.
And you know this means thatyou know we have to have the
capabilities of picking theright people right For carrying
out particular tasks and, youknow, consistently evaluating
(05:37):
their performance, which I'mgetting better at that, you know
, because I'm guilty of.
You know, hey go do this Rightand then turning my back on and
getting distracted by somethingelse and not necessarily
following back up.
But you gotta have that, that,that that picker, you gotta have
a good picker right.
Because if you're anything likeI am, you know I'm guilty, I
(06:00):
have a lot of character defects,I have a lot of shortcomings.
I don't give very good clarity.
You know I don't express thevision clearly enough to the
right people.
There's not the right people inthe room at the time where it's
like, oh shit, I'm hoping thatthat message gets out.
But the thing that I've learnedover the years too, is that
people don't start taking youserious until you repeat
(06:21):
yourself several times, andusually they say the magic
number seven times before theyactually take you serious.
You know what I mean.
So I'll intentionally be abutthead and we'll have a
meeting and I'll say somethingI'll repeat myself seven times,
because, and one last time, lastbut not least, number seven,
make sure we do this right X, y,z, whatever that, whatever that
(06:42):
might be Right.
But you know, evaluating theirperformance, like that's, that's
, that's something big, andwe're we're going to probably
talk about a little more of thatlater on and you know, this is
thing too.
I wish I had like four hours ofof like really dive in deep
into you know what, what we'reabout to talk about today.
(07:04):
You know I was talking to Vicearlier about like.
You know we're just reallygoing to scratch the surface
here when, in terms of likeleadership and how that rolls
into creating a great culture,how that rolls into creating,
you know, omnipresence and andbrand awareness and and all
those good things.
But I think I think we puttogether enough bullet points to
(07:25):
you know cover and have youguys pretty much get the gist of
what it is.
You know that we're trying tosay.
But, getting back to you know,picking the right people and
making sure they have thecapabilities do they get it, do
they want it?
Do they understand it?
You know Gino Wickman talksabout the GWI get it, want it
(07:46):
and understand it, or have thecapabilities, gwc, I think, get
it, want it and have thecapabilities of doing it.
Okay, it's been a minute.
That's probably a yearly readthat.
I should probably pick that upsoon and read that.
But, and understanding people'sstrengths and weaknesses right,
and their limitations right, andjust because you put somebody
in a position and they don't doso well in a position doesn't
(08:08):
mean that they they, you knowwon't excel in in a different
position.
You know, and I think Vic as aperfect example, there's a
couple of things that we bouncedhim around in and not saying
that he, he didn't do well inthose positions, but there was
other positions, like the onehe's in today, where he's really
grabbed it and and has has ranwith it and has become a great
(08:31):
fricking content creator.
And, uh, I'm grateful to havehim in my life today, or else we
probably still wouldn't bedoing this at least on a weekly
basis, cause I think there was acouple of times where I was
like, oh man, I don't know atleast one major time and were on
the road and I was like, dude,I don't know, man, if there was
going to be a day that weweren't going to actually do a
live right, cause, of course,I'm a glutton for punishment, so
(08:53):
we do this live every week.
So what you see is what you gethere, kids, I'm sorry, this is
live, raw and uncut.
Switch the channel, but if youlove it and think somebody can
get something out of this,please share it with them.
Okay, and if you've got anyquestions, please put them in
the comments and I will get tothem as soon as I can.
I actually got my trusty iPadup here so I can see what
(09:15):
everyone out in the internetworld is what they have to say.
So, anyhow, however, gettingback to the great leaders and
sometimes being a crisis managerright, we sometimes are
marriage counselors, sometimeswe are TV repair guys, sometimes
(09:36):
whatever.
Whatever it takes, especiallywhen you work here at TC Backer.
It's whatever it takes andwhich may mean having to deal
with problems for which there'sno playbook for, and I think I
might have experienced one ofthem today and inevitably,
(09:56):
mistakes will be made and greatleaders learn how to rebound and
move on.
We were talking about resiliencyearlier and I think that's
something.
I think that's going to be areally good topic for an episode
at some point in time I think Igot some notes in my why Some
of you have heard me talk aboutmy notes and I call it my why
(10:20):
and bouncing back and notnecessarily allowing a situation
or an event ruin your entireday or week or month or
potentially even a whole year,but you know, learning how to
rebound and all that stuff.
So, effective leadership youknow, leaders who have actively,
(10:44):
you know, inspected andprovided feedback are more
likely to get desired outcomesRight.
And that phrase people talkabout, I hear this phrase
probably more now than ever.
People expect what is inspectedRight.
So people do what you inspect.
(11:04):
And you know, I think the firsttime that I may have heard that
.
I don't know if I fullyunderstood that until I actually
sat down and I started to jotsome notes and stuff down, you
know, and, and and kind of couldfigure out a way to, to
articulate it in a sense where Iunderstood it.
So then if I'm saying peopleexpect what is inspected, then I
(11:28):
could articulate to our leaders, our managers, and listen, this
thing is fluid, right, like ourKPIs continuously change, our
SOPs continuously change, ourstandards usually change for the
better and rise.
A lot of these things are fluidand we're recently revamping
(11:49):
some of our kpis and along withthat comes creating some more
sops.
Anytime you get in there andyou start tweaking things, that
usually takes you down to aanother rabbit hole and you
realize, well, this might bebroken or this hasn't worked for
a while, or whatever the casemight be.
So people do what you inspect,right, not what you expect.
(12:12):
This highlights commonleadership principle.
It means that individuals tendto prioritize the things that
you're actually checking ormonitoring.
Going back to, I do somewhat ofa piss poor job of falling back
up and just monitoring, butthat's where KPIs are very
crucial, right?
Rather than things that arejust expected right, and I'm
(12:34):
guilty of that of like, justkind of like expecting things,
you know, and and I heard thislong time ago expectations are
premeditated resentment.
So why do I have expectationsIf it, if it's my fault that I
didn't articulate the messagewell enough or follow up and
check in and critique littlecritiques along the way, right,
(12:54):
if I'm seeking a desired outcome.
So, anyhow, what formerly?
In other words, I'm sorry.
In other words, what youformally assess and evaluate
will likely be the focus oftheir attention and efforts.
So, getting back to, peopleexpect what is expected.
(13:16):
So for an example, I got apretty good example here and I'm
going to use project managerright.
So if a project manager expectsteam members to meet a certain
deadline but doesn't trackprogress or provide regular
feedback, they might find thatdeadlines are falling behind.
However, if the manager rightactively monitors progress,
(13:38):
provides feedback and evenoffers support again critiquing
right when needed they are morelikely to see the deadlines are
met right.
So that means just because andthat this is a part this is the
learning curve here of learninghow to delegate right.
Delegate doesn't mean set it andforget it Doesn't mean that
(14:00):
whatsoever.
That means get the frameworkbuilt out.
This share what my experiencehas been thus far right, and
that doesn't mean it's not goingto change.
That doesn't mean that thatperson that you actually
delegate it to doesn't have abetter idea where it's quicker,
faster, better, um, whatever thecase might be.
(14:21):
I'm sorry, I keep getting phonecalls again.
It just seems like the lastpast couple of weeks here.
Don't you know who I am, butanyhow I'll have to get back to
you.
Actually, that number Iactually recognize.
So I don't think he follows uson social, so that's probably
why he didn't call.
So again getting back to theexample of you know delegating
(14:44):
and following back up andmonitoring progress and
critiquing things along the way,right Like, just don't wait to.
The example of you knowdelegating and falling back up
and monitoring progress andcritiquing things along the way,
Right Like, just don't wait tothe to the end, like come back
six months later and wonder whythings aren't the way or up to
speed or, you know, whatever thecase might be, and I have been
so guilty, you know, inidentifying that shortcoming of
myself, it's really half thebattle, you know, until I've
(15:06):
smashed my head against the wallnumerous times and screamed and
hollered and jumped up and downand all those crazy things and
behaved poorly and setexpectations for people, you
know, and then again going togetting back to the premeditated
, premeditated resentment.
So some of you might be likewhat does any of this have to do
(15:30):
with creating a brand?
Okay, well, this is thing.
We're no longer just a roofingcompany, we're a marketing
company, we're a brandingcompany.
We are in the people buildingbusiness.
Right, we build people.
So where does that start?
That starts with coaching,mentoring, leading by example.
(15:51):
All those cliches, all thosecatchphrases, all that stuff.
It's true, it's one thing tocome on a podcast, run your
mouth all freaking day long andtalk about how I did this and
how I did that, but where therubber really meets the road is
when I'm off the air.
Am I falling up?
Am I doing these things?
Am I working on myself?
Right?
Well, I guess that's still outto jury, but I can tell you this
(16:15):
I am working on these things.
I am not perfect at thesethings, but again, this, this is
.
There's no final destinationhere.
Right, it's a journey thatwe're on.
We're all in this together and,uh, I love it.
I love it.
So our job, right, as as amarketing company that does
roofing, right, and in thepeople building business, right,
(16:37):
our job is to bring awarenessto customers.
Right, well, I can't do that.
I don't want to get out here onevery single freaking rooftop
and screen TC backer and hopepeople that trust, like and know
me.
Right, it takes, it takes avillage, right?
And?
And to give them that lasting,trusting impression of our
(16:58):
organization.
You might ask yourself what doesany of this have to do with
brand awareness, right?
Well, I started with theleadership.
I started with leading byexample and having a good picker
and surrounding yourself aroundhighly motivated people who are
trying to not only change theirlives for the better but also
(17:22):
improve the quality of thecommunity in which we live in
the better, but also improve thequality of the community in
which we live in.
So we are in the business ofcultivating a group of people
that believe in themselves,believe in the brand and what
they are trying to achieve right.
So that starts at the top.
So let's talk about brandawareness.
(17:42):
Okay, everything everyone seeswith your logo on it is bringing
awareness to your company.
Most people, most people, needat least 11 to 13 impressions.
Touch points, right.
If they don't know, if theydon't know you before they'll
even call right.
So the name of the game is ishe who gets the most touch
(18:06):
points first wins, right?
So if we're in a highlycompetitive market and you know
our team is just kind of sittingaround in the sales office
waiting for the phone to ringand not participating in in the
omnipresence that we're tryingto create here by, you know,
(18:26):
putting door hangers out,putting yard signs out, churning
out amazing work where you knowpeople will refer us, give us a
good review, you know.
And then, of course, if theback office isn't doing.
You know what we're supposed tobe doing.
You know, as far as themarketing aspect of things
Facebook ads if our team's notsharing our Facebook ads, you
(18:50):
know tagging other people in it.
So this, this isn't just like aone person job to help create
this.
Right, our logo is, is not, isnot our brand.
So I just want to clear that up.
Like, the logo isn't the brand,okay, it's creating an image in
(19:12):
somebody's mind, though, okay,and hopefully a feeling of trust
Every time that they see ourlogo.
I want them to feel that thatfeeling of trust Like they.
They stand behind, they havegreat people that work for them.
I want to work there, right,feeling that.
I hope that we do.
I hope that we're creating thatfeeling.
(19:37):
You know what I mean, and a lotof times, a person's first
impression comes from a Googlereview.
That's why we talked about thetrifecta last week a little bit.
The three-legged stool, right,the repeat referral and reviews,
right, that's what we should bethinking about as salespeople,
right, and?
And not just that.
I mean there, there's more toit than just, oh, you know the
(19:58):
three R's, but that's again.
We're just.
We're just.
We're just scratching thesurface here, right, and, and
what we're just?
We're just, we're justscratching the surface here,
right, and?
And what we're talking about isis is we're talking about our
brand, right, and we don't?
We here we don't usemanipulation marketing.
We don't use the buy one, getone free method or the
percentage off, or or you knowany of that stuff.
(20:19):
We want people who buy from us,right, because they believe in
what it is that we're trying todo here.
Right, they believe in thevalue of of what we're doing.
Right, giving back to thecommunity, building a company
that everybody wants to work for, right, that's, that's culture.
Right, that's a part of it.
It's a small piece of it.
I could talk about culture allfreaking day, you know, and then
(20:42):
creating, creating, you knowthat unshakable culture.
I call it unshakable culture,right, I've heard, I'm sure I
heard that someplace but onceyou have built that unshakable
culture, that's when your brandcan earn the reputation in the
marketplace.
Not only, not only are is yourexcuse me, past, present and
(21:05):
future customers your brand, incase you didn't know that they
are.
And let's not forget about yourteam.
Your team plays a huge role inthe brand making machine here.
Your team is a huge part of thestory.
Okay, creating an image in theminds of your clients and your
team.
Right, creating omnipresenceright, like we're everywhere,
(21:26):
like your team's.
Out in the grocery store,they're wearing shirts on the
weekends, hats at the you know,the kids baseball game, all that
stuff.
I love seeing family photos ofour team members that somebody's
wearing a hat.
They're not at work, they'reoff the clock, but they eat,
breathe and shit this thing.
Right, those are the type ofpeople that we're trying to
build.
Those are the type of peoplethat we are trying to attract.
(21:50):
So hopefully, we're going tolearn how to do this, you know,
through leadership.
Right, utilize, brand, createan omnipresence and stand the
test of time and take yourbusiness to the next level,
right, so how do we do some ofthat?
Right, I talked about thebackend, the marketing team that
(22:11):
we have here, most of which wedo all in-house.
Big shout out to John, johnnyStouffer and Skylar and Vic and
and Aaron Thomas over there at asales gadget Great.
So there's three forms of media, okay, there's, there's rented,
there's earned and there'sowned.
Right, and some of you may haveheard of this and some of you
may not have any idea what I'mtalking about.
(22:32):
So I'm going to touch on thesea little bit.
So rented, rented media okay is, is you own the content?
Okay, but you don't own outletssuch as like LinkedIn, facebook
, youtube, all those thingsright, that's kind of rented
space.
You have to pay for that space,okay.
And then there's earned rightEarned and we talked about
(22:55):
reviews earlier word of mouthand referrals.
You have to rely on somebodyelse for this, okay, we have to
rely on our, our teammates, wehave to rely on our production
team, we have to rely on thehomeowner giving us a review.
Hopefully we performed a greatjob, so they feel that we're
(23:18):
worthy of getting a five-starreview and they're more
important than I think a lot ofcompanies understand.
I kind of scroll Googlesometimes and I'll Google,
doesn't matter where I'm at,I'll Google roofers near me and
see who pops up and what pops up.
And I don't just go to thefirst page.
I kind of click through, clickthrough, click through, and it
(23:39):
is amazing to me the amount ofroofing contractors that are out
there that don't pay too muchattention to Google guaranteed
and reviews or replying back tobad reviews, because you're
going to get them.
Let's face it, we're going toget bad reviews.
It's how we deal with it thatseparates us, right, most of the
(24:00):
time.
I'll be honest with you.
We do have a handful of badreviews.
We can't ever figure out ifthey were clients of ours or not
, but we do with you.
We do have a handful of badreviews.
We can't ever figure out ifthey were clients of ours or not
, but we do reply back.
We apologize that you've had abad experience with us.
Please let us know what we doto resolve the issue.
Blah, blah, blah.
Of course you never hearanything back.
We looked our name up in oursystem.
Of course they're not there,and most of these they're
(24:21):
probably envious haters or othercompanies or who.
Who the hell knows?
You know it could be some guythat's watching this right now
thinking I'm a butthead, anddecided to go on TC backers
Google page and give us a badreview.
I don't know, it is what it is,but again, you got to stay
resilient, right?
So, anyhow.
And then there's there's theowned space of marketing
(24:44):
marketing.
Okay, you got your website, gota blog, got an email list, you
got direct mail, but each one ofthese work together.
You have to do all of them, butunderstanding them like I kind
of broke down a little bit helpsyou understand.
You know what and where and whythese things are important.
(25:05):
Okay, you're going to have topay for the rented space.
You own the content.
You have control over thecontent in which you are
producing and putting out onthese other outlets and forms of
creating a brand and gettingyourself out there in front of
people.
Right, and this, this is whereyour team, your past, your
present, your future clientshelp also become your brand on a
(25:30):
lot of these outlets as well.
Right Just to the last past fewdays, there must have been a
storm or something that camethrough where I see past,
present and future clientsrecommending us in a lot of
these Facebook groups and pagesand people you know be in the
now.
There's a lot of these be in thenows and someone's asking for a
(25:52):
referral or a reference orwhatever the case might be like
hey, does anybody know a goodflat rubber roofer?
And it's like I see half thesepeople.
I don't know who they are, butbecause of creating that
omnipresence right, they couldhave just saw our billboards.
Or I even seen someone say, hey, I see these guys around a lot,
or hey, they did my neighbor'sroof right.
Obviously we did a good job totheir neighbor's roof because
(26:13):
the neighbor wasn't over theretalking shit about us because we
did a bad job right.
So that's creating.
But they wouldn't have seen us,they wouldn't have known if our
trucks weren't out there, ifour yard sign wasn't out there,
if our team didn't go out thereand at least do a six pack, six
cross street, three to the left,three to the right.
We would be doing theneighborhood a disservice, like
(26:35):
somebody said last week, I think, if we didn't let the neighbors
know that we are in theneighborhood and we're here to
take care of you.
We're here to serve if you guysever need anything, because
we're not necessarily here tosell you a roof.
We just want to be your roofer.
We want to be your exteriorcontractor, we want to be your
family's exterior contractor.
We want to build that trust.
We want them to know us and weobviously want them to like us,
(26:58):
because that's who people dobusiness with.
People do business with peoplethat they know, that they like,
that they trust right.
And that's what we're trying tolook Every time someone sees
this logo.
I want them to feel trust.
That's a trusted household name, right, and it takes time.
You're going to get knocked down.
(27:18):
You're going to have to getback up.
You're going to make mistakes,but you got to correct them,
like immediately.
Make mistakes, but you got tocorrect them, like immediately.
Don't procrastinate, don't runfrom, don't let fear.
Control, control you rightFight, flight or freeze.
You have three choices.
You got three F's fun first andflexible.
I'm just kidding.
Fun, right, fight, flight orfreeze.
(27:40):
But you should be right Funfirst and flexible.
You got to stay resilient.
I can't talk about, I can'twait till we do that.
We're going to do one sin onresiliency.
I love that word.
Right now, that's my word, it'smy jam, my jam, let's go Anyhow
.
So we touched on creating.
Obviously, becoming a goodleader starts.
(28:02):
Everything starts up at the top.
Everything stinks.
What do they say?
The fish stinks at the headwhen there's a problem, right?
Typically, we've worked forcompanies where we feel like the
people that work for thosepeople are terrified to make
mistakes.
Right, you gotta, you gotta,you gotta.
Leave room for error.
There's going to be mistakesmade.
(28:22):
Shit, we made some mistakes inour marketing.
The phones weren't working.
I still don't have any ideawhat the hell was going on there
.
But once we found out, spent alot of money on marketing for
about 30 days.
Come find out the damn phonewasn't ringing.
Couldn't figure out why thephone wasn't ringing.
So then I picked my cell phoneup, I called the phone number
that was posted on our websiteand guess what it rang it rang,
(28:45):
it rang, it rang.
It rang Like whoa, wait aminute, where's Cam's voice at
stating that this call may berecorded or monitored, let alone
a freaking voicemail.
Not that we should ever, ever,let it go to voicemail.
And that's the thing.
Once you get the phone ringinglike answer the phone, bro, do
what you're going to say you'regoing to do, show up, suit up,
(29:15):
no matter what, and get outthere and do the best job that
you can.
So, yeah, my point is lead byexample, right, people, people,
people do what they watch.
Man, I could again.
I could be up here and I'll bethe first one to tell you that
that I'm I'm not perfect at anyof this, but by me teaching and
leading by example and all ofthese things, I probably get
more out of coaching than Iactually do studying, because I
(29:36):
know I have to study if I'mgoing to lead or if I'm going to
mentor from, if there's acoaching opportunity.
And the other thing that I'velearned too is sometimes I just
got to let people work thingsout and just stay out of the way
when I used to feel like I hadto control every single
situation.
But again, that's where I feellike that unshakable culture.
You know where people havetaken ownership culture.
(29:57):
You know where people havetaken ownership.
You know there's people again,getting back to some of these
Facebook groups where I seepeople recommending us, there
are, there are team members.
Today I saw it today that thatisn't even on that side of the
building.
That has nothing to do right,technically, technically, but
they understand the importanceof of promoting the company, but
(30:20):
they they they're notnecessarily right, but they
understand the importance ofpromoting the company, but
they're not necessarily right.
But they're not that smallminded to think that this won't
affect me at some point in time.
The guys aren't selling jobs ifthe phone's not ringing, right,
even though all they do iscrunch numbers or pull tickets
or bid jobs for new construction, right, they do know in the
long run, at some point in time,that the phone stops ringing,
(30:41):
this will affect my job andthat's where we're all on the
same team and that's where, like, creating that unity, that
camaraderie, that fellowship,and it's not always about
business, it's not always aboutwork, it's about getting and
pulling together and performing21 Turkey Sloot Shit.
Before I forget, we arecelebrating, we're going to do
(31:04):
something.
Something's coming up soon forour 17th anniversary 8-8, 8-8,
8-7, 7-7, 0-8, 7-7, 7-7-0-8,.
Okay, is our 17th anniversaryright?
And getting back to a littlebit of what we were talking
about here, none of this right.
I'm not saying that I wasn'tlike the founder and the CEO and
(31:25):
, yeah, I went out and I swunghammer and killed myself pretty
much at the start of this.
It was until I realized that Ineeded help.
We brought a lot of people in.
Most have stayed over the years, still bringing new recruits in
.
We're always looking for toptalent, by the way, doesn't
(31:48):
matter what field, doesn'tmatter.
Don't have to be a roofer,don't have to be a gutterman,
don't have to be a salesperson,but if you're looking for a
career change, let us know,cause we're always.
If you're, if you're highlymotivated and aren't afraid of
work or being held accountable,let us know.
Anyhow, the amazing team I wasjust talking to Jan about this
(32:12):
last night the amazing team thatthat we have molded and built
and coached and mentored, andshit that's.
And that's the other thing.
It's like when you're learningprobably just as much from your
team as as I can give them, andwe're really at that point right
now, okay, where I'm learningprobably more from our team
right now.
That's where true, genuine,authentic culture lives.
(32:36):
In that right, I don't need toknow all the answers.
I don't know all the answers.
Okay, I have no idea what thehell I'm doing half the time.
Again, sometimes there's noplaybook, but I do know how I
react.
I do know my behavior canaffect every single outcome.
Okay, like if I'm sitting inthe room and I have to pretend
(32:59):
I'm smartest person in the roomand I have all the answers, when
everybody in that room knowsthat I don't, I look like a fool
and that's okay, that I don'tknow, and it's okay that there
may be people in this building,that there is people in this
building that are way and muchmore smarter than I am, and
especially in certain areas ofthis, especially where we're at
today, I'm cool with that.
(33:20):
I think the vulnerability, Ithink the transparency goes a
lot further than me going upthere pulling the plug on a
project or knocking somebody'sideas down.
Baker came to me a couple oftimes this week with amazing
ideas that he thought of overthe weekend.
I could have sat in my officewhen he presented them to me and
(33:41):
I could have shot him down.
I could have ripped the rug outfrom underneath him and said
that was dumb.
No, we're not going to do itthis way.
You should really do it thatway.
I heard him out.
He's going with it.
Yesterday he came up, proposedanother idea to me right, loved
it.
I thanked him, he.
He told me today in a textmessage that what you know, the
(34:06):
outcome of it and it, it'sworking Right.
I I don't even think I gave himas far as like feedback or any
ideas of like well, maybe youshould try it, like this or
whatever.
It's like fuck.
I've never done it before and Idon't think he's ever done it
before.
It's just his idea and he ranwith it.
Now, what do you think that'sgoing to do?
It empowered him.
(34:28):
He's taken ownership in thatshit.
He's taken ownership.
He has taken ownership in a lotof things.
Why?
Because I'm not a dick.
Most of the time, I do have baddays, but anyhow, I think I'm
done.
I think I'm done running mymouth right now, um, but listen.
If you're a contractor and youwant to learn more, okay, follow
(34:49):
us on facebook, youtube, hit meup, private chat, whatever,
whatever, whatever, whatever,hey.
And if you're a homeowner, okay, and your roof is roof is old,
it's leaking or it's damaged,don't wait for things to get
worse.
At TC Backer, we've helpedthousands and I mean thousands
homeowners protect their homeswith quality roofing, financing
(35:11):
options and a team they cantrust.
Getting back to the trust no,like, right, want to take the
next step?
Visit our website or give us acall for a free inspection.
No pressure, just answers.
And remember a solid roof isn'tjust about shingles, it's about
a piece.
It's about peace of mind.
Till next week.
You guys take care of eachother and stay cool out there.
It is hot as hell.
(35:32):
Have a good night, guys.
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